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THE PEACE 

OF 

THE 

SOLOMON 

VALLEY 




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- 






“The Peace of the Solomon Valley mingled with 
the peace of our own hearts." 



THE PEACE 



SOLOMON 

VALLEY 



MARGARET HILL M C CARTER 

Author of 

"The Price of the Prairie" 

“In Old Quiyira.” 
“Cuddy’s Baby, "Etc. 



CHICAGO 

AC.M C CLURG CrOD. 

1911 



C°py right 1911 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 


Published September, 1911 


Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London, England 



The Caslon Pres* 
Chicago 


. ©CI.A295762 

At 


To the Good People 
Of a Good Land 
Even the Folks Who Dwell 
In this Valley 
With Deep Appreciation 
Of Their Kind Words and Deeds 
To Me- ward 


“If you're world-weary , and longing 
for rest , 

Just come to the Plains and submit to 
be blessed 

Lilla Day Monroe. 


THE PEACE OF THE 
SOLOMON VALLEY 


MARCH 

Letter from JOHN ELLERTON, 
New York City , to DANIEL 
BRONSON Talton, Kansas . 

New York City, March. 
Dear Dan : 

The newspaper you sent last week 
was almost like a letter from you, be- 
cause it was just like you to send the 
paper instead of writing the message it 
contained. You know how I welcome 
every bit of information concerning you 
and yours, but, of course, you’d never 
tell me how prosperous you are now. 
Left it for the Talton Herald to set 
forth how “ Daniel Bronson, one of the 
well-to-do farmers up on the Solomon, 
shipped out” — how many carloads of 
cattle was it? And what is alfalfa 
coined out of anyhow, that it can bring 
in such a wad of money to a “well-to- 
do ” farmer? Well-to-do ! I should say 
so, with checks like the one the printer 
set up coming in with the shipment of 
stock and sale of that long-legged clover 
you call alfalfa. Did my heart good to 
read about it, though, just because your 
name went with it. I’ll confess here 
that I was afraid at first to look through 
that newspaper for the blue pencil 
marks, for fear — oh, well, never mind. 


7 


8 


THE PEACE OF THE 


We are not young any more. I sup- 
pose we must expect now that some- 
time one will be taken and the other left. 
I can’t realize that we are both getting 
close to sixty, with children grown up. 
At least my boy thinks he is a man. 
And yet, Dan, it seems such a short time 
since we went out of Yale together, 
neck and neck for honors. You remem- 
ber our planning to go West together? 
What care-free days those were ! That 
was a glorious jaunt we took across the 
Plains back in the ’70’s. You stayed in 
Kansas because you wanted to and I 
came back to New York because I ha 
to. But say, old man, you needn’t fi 
your letters as you did your last on 
with what you say I did for you in you 
day of trouble out there. I only loaned 
you a few thousand dollars to tide you 
over the day of wrath when the drout T 
and grasshopper and mortgage fell on 
you as well as on the unjust. And you 
have paid me back every cent. You 
seem to forget that. I wonder where I 
would have been in that near-panic of 
1907 if I hadn’t had some good Kansas 
coin (coin you had minted out of your 
cattle and alfalfa) to invest when all 
the springs were running dry for us 
smaller fellows in the East. 

But I’m writing now, Dan, to ask a 
favor of you. You remember how that 
rheumatism had me hobbled down when 
I went to Kansas thirty years or more 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


9 


ago ? You ought to, because you had to 
carry me half the time. And you re- 
member what six months in the Solo- 
mon Valley did for me? I came home 
sound as a dollar and never had a twinge 
of rheumatism since that summer. Now 
my boy, Leroy, who finished Yale a 
year ago, has been ailing with the same 
accursed affliction for nearly two years. 
It knocked him out of his athletics the 
last year of his college course. It nearly 
broke his heart, or what is worse, his 
spirit. He wants me to send him off to 
Europe. Dan, I can’t afford it right 
i, now, and I don’t want to anyhow. 
( He’s got the wrong notion about him- 
af self and the world. Rheumatism will 
jj do that for a fellow. He thinks he is 
• going to be a confirmed invalid, a gen- 
tleman invalid, not able to earn, but 
ii fully able to spend. And that ’s not all. 
He does n’t look at things plumb. New 
York is all right as a place to make 
money, but, like all big cities, it is a 
poor place to make character in chil- 
dren. Why, this city’d go to smash if 
all the New England, Indiana, and 
Kansas country-bred boys were sud- 
denly pulled out of its business circles, 
i But Roy ’s got the idea — you know his 
kind, Dan, — that the Lord made the 
world as far west as the Adirondacks, 
maybe, and left the rest to chance. He ’s 
fixed in the foolery that this city is the 
centre of God’s eternal universe. 


10 


THE PEACE OF THE 


I want to send him to you for six 
months, first, to lose that rheumatism 
and confirmed-invalid notion some- 
where out there on the prairies, and sec- 
ond, to learn what the West and coun- 
try life are worth. Can you stand him 
for that time? You can let him learn 
his lesson alone. He’ll come to you 
with some high and mighty notions 
about the East and himself. If he 
does n’t come home next Fall a new man 
it will be the disappointment of my life. 

If our children could always lean on 
us it would be easy sailing down the 
years, but I’m up against the fact that 
we must shape them up to live their own 
lives, and that those lives may be in 
marble halls or wayside hovels, with 
Fate playing the strongest hand of cir- 
cumstance against us. 

Don’t misunderstand Roy. He is a 
gentleman clear to the bone. He con- 
fides in me as much almost as in his 
mother, who, by the way, agrees with 
me only partially in this plan. I’m 
proud of him, of course, but he must 
learn that he ’s only a temporary invalid 
and he must get a bigger perspective 
on the country over which Old Glory 
swings and on the folks that live under 
the shadow of it. You know, Bronson, 
how much I ’ll appreciate what you can 
do for me. 

I’m so concerned about Roy, I al- 
most forgot to say that Mrs. Ellerton 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


11 


has been called up to East Machias, 
Maine, to stay indefinitely with a great 
aunt of hers who is almost helpless. 
The old lady won’t come down to New 
York and stay with us. She’s rooted 
fast to that little Maine village. She 
took care of my wife’s mother when she 
was a girl and made such a home for her 
as few orphan children have. Leroy’s 
grandmother was left alone early in life. 
She had Mary (Mrs. Ellerton) prom- 
ise never to neglect any wish of Aunt 
Prudence’s, and it is the old lady’s wish 
that Mary should take care of her in her 
last days. She seems to be one of those 
little Yankee women whose last days do 
last. I am glad that Mary can be with 
her, although it would simplify matters 
mightily if Aunt Prudence would only 
let us take care of her here. However, 
she is as averse to coming to the city as 
Leroy is to leaving it, so you can see 
my family dilemma has a couple of 
horns to be dealt with. 

I haven’t told Roy who you are. I 
am just letting him go to strangers in a 
way, so he will learn something, if it’s 
in him to learn, and not be prejudiced 
by any obligations to our feelings. I 
believe it’s in him, too. With best 
wishes to you and the children, I am 

Yours as always, 

John Ellerton 


12 


THE PEACE OF THE 


Letter from DANIEL BRONSON 
to JOHN ELLERTON 

Talton, Kansas, March . 
Dear John: 

Yours received. You know I ’m glad 
to be able to return a small part of the 
obligation I owe to you. Send Leroy 
on at once. We can care for him nicely. 
I ’m afraid he will find us dull company, 
but if he likes music, Eunice can play 
and sing some. 

But business aside, Jack, it did me a 
world of good to see your hand-writing 
again and I jumped at the thought of 
having your boy with us. Took me 
back to the days when you and I came 
here together, you to get back your 
health, and I to make my fortune. We 
both succeeded, although you came 
through in one season, and I put in 
years at the job. I can see you now, 
white and delicate and brave in your 
suffering. 

This land was desolate enough then. 
Only Hope filtered the atmosphere 
with a golden glamour. I Ve seen that 
glamour fade and the light turn to 
gloom more than once since the day I 
preempted my first hundred and sixty, 
and cut sod for my little dugout home- 
stead. You know I built up on the 
swell above the river with not a claim- 
holder near me then. I can see three 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


13 


villages from the front porch now, and 
the Solomon Valley is like the Garden 
of Eden. And yet sometimes I am 
sentimental enough to wish for the old- 
time picture back again, the plain little 
house, the prairies rippling away in the 
distance, and the common loneliness, 
the common need for companionship. 
We were poor in those days, as prop- 
erty goes, but we were rich in the spirit 
of neighborly kindness. When our 
baby boy died, John Ellerton Bronson 
we called him, we could n’t have endured 
it but for the loving sympathy of those 
homesteaders, poor as ourselves, but 
generous, and sympathetic in the sor- 
rows of others. 

I might have come into my own a 
little sooner in New York, but I’ve 
always been glad I came West; glad 
that it was my privilege to see this val- 
ley change from a stretch of blossomy 
springtime prairie to a sweep of alfalfa 
bloom, from a seared waste of burned 
mid-summer grasses to the green acres 
of corn. It is worth the best years of 
one’s life to have watched the transfor- 
mation. 

But I won’t keep this up. Send 
Leroy out and we’ll fix that rheuma- 
tism. 

My Seth is a perfect giant now. 
He finishes college next year. Carries 
football and track-meet honors enough 
to break down an ordinary constitution. 


r 

u THE PEACE OF THE 

He has about made up his mind to go 
West when he gets through school. 
With us there is no real West, you 
know, till we get to the Rockies and 
beyond. Of course, I ’d rather keep 
Seth here, and I need him. The ranch 
is getting to be more of a proposition 
to manage every year. We used to 
think we were busy, John, in the little 
corn patches and mowing lots up be- 
tween the Vermont hills, before we 
went down to Yale. But when a 
bumper wheat crop comes our way out 
here, with four or five cuttings a season 
on the quarter section I have set to al- 
falfa, I can assure you that Satan must, 
look to something else beside idle hands 
to get in his work in a Kansas summer. 
So I could give Seth a fine start in life, 
if he only took to the soil. But he 
doesn’t. Since he was a little boy he 
has been crazy over mines and metals. 
He ’s an expert even now in those lines 
and can hardly wait to finish school, he 
is so eager for the West and the moun- 
tains and mining. 

As I said, Eunice can play and sing 
some. She has finished with her teach- 
ers here and wants to go East in the 
Fall. I may ask your protection for 
her then. It was her mother’s wish 
that she should have the opportunity i 
for a musical career. Poor Ellen never 
really felt at home in Kansas. You 
know she was young when she died. It 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


15 


was only the hard work of a pioneer 
farmer’s wife that fell to her lot, and 
when times grew better and we began 
to know some of the luxuries of the 
country, she was taken from us. I feel 
that that is the reason she was so eager 
to have our daughter given a musical 
education. She thought Eunice’s life 
in Kansas would be as hers had been. 
John, I can’t blame her. It was the 
women who bore the heaviest burdens 
here in the first years. 

I shall miss my little girl dreadfully 
if she does go away. But we must not 
stand in the way of our children doing 
the best with their talents. And as you 
say, we can’t keep them with us always. 
They must fly their own gait. 

Again, I assure you we’ll welcome 
your boy and do our best for his com- 
fort. 

With kind regards to Mrs. Ellerton, 
I am, 

Faithfully yours, 

Dan'l Bronson 


\ 


16 


THE PEACE OF THE 


APRIL 

Letter from LEROY ELLERTON 
to HIS FATHER 

Talton, Kansas., April . 
Dear Father: 

At last I am at the end of my jour- 
ney, aching in every joint I ever had 
and some new ones I Ve just discovered. 
But here I am in this God-forsaken 
Kansas region called the Solomon Val- 
ley. It may be a degree better than 
Death’s Valley, which is still farther 
West somewhere, I am told. But since 
I am here, like Hamlet’s ghostly father, 
“ doomed for a certain time to walk this 
particular piece of earth,” here for the 
first time, and I hope to Jiminy, the last 
as well, I ’ll try to make the best of it if 
it kills me. But it does seem to me that 
I might have gone to Europe, like a 
gentleman, if you had n’t come down on 
me with the ukase — “Go to the Solo- 
mon Valley for six months and come 
back cured forever.” 

Six months! I’ll be cured long be- 
fore that, for I ’ll be dead. I know, of 
course, that Indians and buffaloes, 
and maybe, cowboys are not to be found 
here now, but it is a cursed crude place 
to thrust an Eastern chap into. And 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


17 


b 


I don’t mind saying, Father mine, that 
I stand up for the prayers of the con- 
gregation. 

A drummer whom I met on the train 
going out of Kansas City promised me 
if I stayed here six months, there’d be 
no pulling me out of Kansas again. Do 
I look like that, I wonder. I can’t see 
where the valley comes in here. It is 
as flat as a pancake for ten thousand 
miles in every direction. I ’m sure the 
drainage is bad. Fine place to cure 
rheumatism, though! Why my father 
should think I ’d ever get well in such 
a miserable place, I can’t comprehend. 
It’s the very bottom of the universe. 
It ’s the under-side of the world. 

When the Kansas City drummer left 
the train at some little town, he said: 
“You are new to the West. There is 
a lot more for a rustic New Yorker to 
learn out here than for a woolly W est- 
erner to learn in the East. Some of 
your folks learn quickly. Some are 
slow, but when they do get their lesson, 
they are the best fellows on earth. My 
friend, I hope you may not only lose 
your rheumatism out on the prairies, I 
hope that you may also lose the notion 
that this part of the Lord’s earth, peo- 
ple and all, just happened, and wasn’t 
set down in the divine plan.” 

I hope he knows. But, to be honest, 
there is something — I don’t know 
What — that seems restful after that 


18 


THE PEACE OF THE 


long car-ride. And it was long. I claim 
I ’m not a provincial, but I did n’t know 
that the world was quite so big both 
ways. There is a tone in the air and 
a little haze of pink on the orchards and 
a thousand shades of green on the 
landscape — all of which was pleasant 
when I stepped off the Pullman at 
Talton. 

Your friend, Bronson, met me at the 
station. He is a tall man, broad- 
chested, erect, with grizzled dark hair 
and bright dark eyes. He is a farmer, 
of course, tanned face and hands, home 
laundered shirt, plain clothes, and 
freshly blacked boots — everything 
showed the country-man in his “other 
clothes.” 

“Is this Leroy Ellerton?” he asked. 
And I must say it was a good voice to 
hear. Something in its intonation was 
in keeping with his strong face and stal- 
wart form. His handshake, too, is 
worth while. There is a kind of life in 
his touch that thrills my nerves to the 
shoulder. He had my suitcases and 
me all stowed into a low, easy phaeton 
before I knew it. I think that, for a 
Westerner, he knows how to handle a 
fellow with rheumatism. I hoped he 
would n’t try to talk to me nor make me 
talk, and he didn’t. If he’ll always 
anticipate my wishes, I can stand him, 
I believe. In fact, it was I who madp 
him talk to me, like this: 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


19 


“You knew my father, Mr. Bron- 
son?” I asked him. 

“Oh, yes; we came West together.” 

“You did? Why, I did n’t know you 
had ever been East.” 

“I haven’t, for a long time.” 

“ You met my father in the East? ” I 
asked. You see, Papa, I was getting 
interested in spite of myself. 

“Yes,” he said, “We were boys to- 
gether.” 

“Father was just out of Yale Uni- 
versity when he came West,” I said, a 
little boastfully. Thought he might as 
well know whose son he had the honor 
of having for his guest. “He wrote 
you I was coming?” 

The old fellow smiled a little. Then 
he said, “Yes, I had a letter from him 
and I came up to meet you.” 

And here I am settled in my room. 
The Bronsons have a better house than 
I had expected, and my den here is spot- 
lessly clean. I ’ve a big easy rocker 
that is very comfortable, and a mirror 
and a writing table. The view from 
my window is really wonderful. I’d 
no idea one could see so far except on 
the ocean. There is a stretch of the 
Solomon River in sight, and just now 
when the sun went down there was a 
kaleidoscope of blending colors in the 
sky. 

I caught sight of a piano as I passed 
by the parlor door on my way to sup- 


20 


THE PEACE OF THE 


per. I had supposed a parlor organ 
would be a luxury here. I reckon I ’m 
doomed to listen to the daughter of the 
house play “Silver Threads among 
the Gold,” and “Lambs of the Upper 
Fold” — oh, Father, what made you 
do it? But no matter. There isn’t 
any Mrs. Bronson now, it seems, and 
this daughter is the housekeeper. She 
isn’t unattractive, and she has a voice, 
magnetic and resonant like her father’s, 
but soft and clear. She is a good cook. 
Her supper was a dream. And would 
you believe it, they had blue china and 
real silver. For the first, I suppose. 
To-morrow it will be a red table cloth 
and iron-stone china and soda biscuit, 
like we found up in York State farm 
houses last Summer. Oh, dear! Will 
this six months ever, ever end? Good- 
night, Father, I’m going to bed. If 
only I could sleep six months! I’ll 
write to mother in the morning. And 
you may send this on to her as soon as 
you have read it. It will save my fin- 
gers some work. I ’m glad she does n’t 
have to bring Aunt Prudence out here. 
* * * Seems to me the architect 

who built this Solomon Valley wasn’t 
an expert in his line. The joke is on 
Solomon. 

Yours with the back-ache, 


Roy 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


21 


Letter from LEROY ELLERTON 
to HIS MOTHER 

Talton, Kansas, April . 

In the south upper veranda, 
with sunshine and no wind . 

Dear Mummy Mine : 

My love and respects to Aunt Pru- 
dence — now that’s my whole duty. 
*She boxed my ears too often when I 
was a boy for me to do more than that 
for her. Not that the boxing wasn’t 
good for me. I respect her for it now. 
But please consider that this sen- 
tence stands at the head of every letter 
that I write to you. Or I could have 
it embossed and framed to hang over 
her bed. Yes, yes, I’ll keep still; I 
know her story. She was a mother to 
my grandmother, and a dear good 
great- mother (is that the way to put 
it?) to you, and you are awfully thank- 
ful that you can be with her. Seems 
to me the Ellertons have a lot to thank 
Providence for. You for being an- 
chored in the dizzy social whirl of East 
Machias and your son and heir nesting 
out in the flat green Sahara thing called 
the Solomon Valley. For it’s a very 
desert in length and loneliness and eter- 
nal sameness, but it is green as the 
greenest sheltered meadow of Maine 


22 


THE PEACE OF THE 


in mid-summer. And you say Aunt 
Prudence hasn’t the rheumatism. Of 
course not. I ’ve got all of it that ’s 
coming to this family. And anyhow, 
she’d not be over eighty and “all her 
faculties bright ” down in East Machias 
if she had this plague of plagues. She ’d 
be under a “sacred to the memory” 
sign in the same form as John Brown’s 
body (Kansas John, you know), long 
enough before eighty. 

But I didn’t mean to send this kind 
of a letter. Father will forward to you 
what I write to him. That will tell the 
important things. I write with you in 
mind, or I ’d never tell him some things. 
Dear old Dad, I’d like to disinherit him 
right now. But I said I ’d quit. Well, 
I am Here. That is to say — No- 
where. Got here as per schedule. 
See Papa’s letter. Do you know this 
Bronson outfit? That last is a Wild 
West novel word. There is a Father 
— not bad to look at for a farmer, but 
all farmer. And there is a Son — I am 
told. He is to appear in a later act of 
this Wild West Show. And there is a 
Daughter. All very interesting, no 
doubt, if I was n’t compelled to see them 
daily. But they are not bad looking. 
Eunice, that’s the girl, is not like a 
farmer’s daughter exactly, although I 
tried at supper and breakfast to let her 
go at that. She let me go, all right. 
When I was n’t thinking of this pain in 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


23 


my shoulder, I couldn’t help noticing 
her a little. 

What does she look like? you will ask, 
because you are a woman. Frankly, I 
don’t know. Just like any other green 
Kansas girl, I reckon. A little while 
ago, she came into my room and told 
me where to find this place at the south 
end of the upper hall. It is the coziest 
spot for a rheum — I mean, fellow. 
Cushions and a big easy chair and a 
willow couch. It ’s all screened in from 
mosquitoes and flies, and a perfect 
surge of sunshine rolls into it. There 
is a little table by the couch and a rug 
on the floor. I wonder if they didn’t 
borrow a lot of their things from all the 
neighbors in town. Sets some folks up 
to have a New Yorker with them, you 
know. 

However, the Bronsons don’t act set 
up. They take me as a matter of 
course. When Eunice brought me out 
here, she said : 

“ This is to be your corner as long as 
you care for it. The sharp air is shut 
away by the gable and the south breeze 
is pleasant here in the hot weather. I 
hope it will be comfortable for you.” 

She was arranging the cushions, and 
as she shook up the pillows, I noticed 
her hands were smooth and her bare 
elbows actually had dimples. I was 
going to say some flattering nothings 
such as country girls feed on, but when 


24 


THE PEACE OF THE 


I looked into her face — I decided not 
to do it. Still, I am afraid I’ll be ex- 
pected to do the gallant thing by this 
Eunice. Mother, rheumatism and gal- 
lantry don’t go together, and I don’t 
know why I must spend energy on this 
daughter. I was sent here and I’m 
serving out a six months’ sentence, 
that ’s all. 

Though for your comfort, Mummy, 
I will tell you that the Bronsons don’t 
seem to expect much of me yet. How 
it will be on a longer acquaintance, I 
can ’t say, nor what I ’ll do when they 
begin to flock to New York to pay back 
this visit. Good-bye now. This and 
Dad’s letter will tell all I know. It ’s 
a warm, drowsy cove up in this corner 
of my cell — all Kansas is a cell to me. 
And I ’m going to sleep as many hours 
as I can. Don’t let Aunt Prudence 
wear you all away. 

Affectionately, 


Roy 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


25 


MAY 

Letter from LEROY ELLERTON 
to HIS FATHER 

Talton, Kansas, May. 
My Dear Father: 

I meant to write you several days 
ago, but we Ve been so busy, I put it 
off. You’ll wonder what I could find 
to make me busy — I who have been 
leaning on cushions for so long. Well, 
everybody out here is that way. And 
since I ’ve been idle for a year, it seems 
good to be at work again. I ’ve been 
here six weeks. I didn’t think I could 
get rid of so much pain in so short a 
time. This is a wonderful air. Why, 
I sleep all night now, and I could eat 
anything from a cucumber pickle to a 
Kansas politician. The Bronsons are 
really well-bred people, even if they do 
live in Kansas, and they keep the neat- 
est home and set up the best table — or 
is it I who am getting my old Yale 
appetite back? 

We have had an abundance of rain 
this season, and it is the greenest world 
out here a poor city fellow with memo- 
ries of brick walls and dust ever looked 
upon. If the fresh air fiends could 
only send their slum children out here 
they would get some of the real thing. 
You ’d be surprised to know how many 
Eastern magazines find their way out 


26 


THE PEACE OF THE 


here. I was amazed when I saw the 
number of books and the kind of books 
in the bookcases. Why, Father, they 
are just like New York in that, now 
really they are. More so than in even 
some swell homes. I know young ladies 
in the East who read less, I do believe, 
than Eunice does. 

But I can’t read all the time. So I 
make myself useful about the house. 
They have wads of flowers in bloom and 
I keep the bouquets fresh in the vases. 
Big business for a young man of 
twenty-three ! Also I play the piano for 
Eunice. She sings very well, consider- 
ing. And she plays for my solos in 
better time than you’d think. You see, 
Pappy dear, I want you to know that 
these folks out here are n’t such heathen 
as you, living in New York and never 
coming out of your shell, would think. 

I believe I have n’t mentioned the son, 
Seth Bronson. He is a physical giant, 
fair though, like Eunice. Did I tell 
you that Eunice has a pretty fine skin 
for Kansas? But this Seth, — well, he 
doesn’t like me, I’m sure. Although 
he is a quiet fellow, I suspect he’s not 
half the fool he might be taken for in 
New York. He ’s quiet like his father. 
I was afraid he ’d bore me to death, but 
instead he lets me alone pretty severely. 

He has just come home for his vaca- 
tion from some place called Manhattan. 
(How homesick even the writing of 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


27 


that name makes me!) For a college 
man it is surprising how he can drop 
in among the hired men and work just 
like one of them. “ How can a fellow 
be a farm-hand and a college student?” 
I asked him the other day. He stared 
at me a minute and said, “If you went 
down to Manhattan, you’d think a fel- 
low wouldn’t want to be a farm-hand 
unless he was a college student, — not 
if he wanted to win out anyhow.” 

One rainy afternoon he asked me 
up to his room for the first time. 
Why, Father, it was a regular college 
den, with pennants and baseball and 
football trophies. Seth is a champion 
at these things, it seems, and a dozen 
pictures and tokens in his room show 
it. And you ought to see the way he 
can handle a horse! Isn’t any more 
excited over the most fractious one than 
I ’d be over a cat. I was out in the pas- 
ture — a township big — when he caught 
one last evening. The whole drove 
came at us like army cavalry. You 
know I got my first Yale “ Y ” in a pole 
vault. I’d have vaulted over a nine- 
foot hedge fence just then, if I ’d only 
had the pole. You can’t do that on a 
last year’s sunflower stalk, and that was 
the longest timber in sight. Seth never 
stopped whistling, and only looked side- 
ways after the colt he wanted. Had it, 
too, before I knew what to do next. 
That horse catch awakened a sleeping 


28 


THE PEACE OF THE 


force in me. I forgot my rheumatism 
altogether and stood straighter than I 
have in a year. I do believe that some- 
where back in a previous incarnation I 
was something of a centaur myself, that 
I somehow belonged to the soil and 
planted and harvested and was at home 
on horseback. I feel it in some new 
pulse-beat of my blood. Anyhow, 
rheumatism or no rheumatism, I ’m 
going to be riding and driving and 
catching loose horses too, before Fall. 
I know I can do it as well as that six- 
footer with his two hundred pounds 
gross on the scales. The lubber! 

Eunice is a musical graduate from 
some college out here they call Wash- 
burn. They talk a lot about it and she 
and Seth are forever guying each other 
about the merits of their two schools. 
That’s one good trait of this family. 
They have some sense of humor and 
can see a joke clear across the Solomon 
to the far prairie. Her room is oppo- 
site mine, and the door is always open 
in the daytime. That room is all one 
symphony of Yale blue; only its white 
“W” for Washburn marks the differ- 
ence between it and the blue of my own 
Yale den at home. I spoke to Eunice 
about it one day and she said something 
about the founder, Ichabod Washburn, 
being a product of Yale. But it didn’t 
seem clear to me. 

Of course, I told them all about your 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


29 


wonderful career at Yale and how only 
one other member of your class ever 
out-ranked you — I’ve forgotten that 
fellow’s name long ago — how it was 
always neck and neck between you two. 
Father Bronson’s eyes glistened with 
real tears as I told the old stories you 
used to tell me of your college days and 
of this old chum of yours. Poor old 
Bronson! I suppose he never had a 
chance at a thing like that in his younger 
years . B ut no matter, F ather, it is really 
surprising how much of a gentleman 
even a farmer like Bronson can be. He 
is one of the most sincere and well- 
meaning men I have ever known. He 
is even beginning to dignify farming in 
my eyes. And Eunice is just like him. 
But Seth — well, there was a kind of 
odd smile on his face when I talked of 
you. Jealousy, I suppose, on account 
of his father. These poor Kansas fel- 
lows can’t help it. 

I must quit now and write to mother. 
Her last letter says Aunt Prudence is 
getting stronger every day, but she adds 
that the old lady is more than ever de- 
termined not to let her out of sight, 
which means a summer of it for Madam 
Ellerton, I suppose. She says she gets 
the letters I send to you the next mail 
after you read them. Good Papa! 
Good-bye, I’m doing fine. 


Leroy 


30 


THE PEACE OF THE 


Letter from LEROY ELLERTON 
to HIS MOTHER 

Talton, Kansas, May . 
Dear Mother Mine : 

This is your dutiful “ loved and only ” 
who is writing to you this exquisite May 
morning. While you are shivering be- 
fore a wood fire down at the beginning 
of things in East Machias where Maine 
starts in to grow a United States, out 
here in the heart of nowhere, watered 
by the Solomon River, there is a 
boundless vasty world of sunshine run- 
ning loose. And while you are still 
clinging to your long-sleeved flannels 
and keeping screened away from 
draughts, I am sitting on the broad 
northeast veranda, letting the wind, 
soft but full of tone, pour over me like 
the surf at Coney Island, and I ’m only 
a little more decently clad than a surf 
bather, too, for I have all my summer 
regimentals on now. It is early Sum- 
mer here, — if only my pen could make 
you feel its balmy breath! Quite a poet 
I ’m getting to be. Did n’t know it was 
in me before. But they say Kansas 
will develop whatever tendency to 
crankism is in one’s constitution. Mine 
seems to be a sickish sentimentalism. 
But it is only to you, Mother, that 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


31 


I mean to let it reveal itself, although 
Dad is such a good fellow, I do turn 
loose to him now and then. But you 
were always my safety valve, Mother, 
and I should have blown up long ago 
without you. 

You don’t know how glad I am to 
hear from you, for you can understand 
me better than Dad can. Blessed old 
Hard Shell writes the funniest letters 
to me. Seems to think I ’ll die of home- 
sickness (I may yet), but he can’t hit 
my homesick streak. I ’m not quite the 
martyr he takes me for. I’m begin- 
ning to get settled. Why, Mummy 
dear, Kansas is on the map, and trains 
run to New York as well as away from 
it. John Ellerton did n’t kick me clear 
off the universe when he shoved me over 
the Alleghany ridge. I’ll tell him so 
sometime when my rheumatism is 
better. 

But back to your letter. I ’m glad 
you are so contented on that stern and 
rock-bound upheaval above sea level. 
You say that after all you are never un- 
happy up in Maine because you love the 
villages and country ways and byways. 
Maybe I have inherited some streak of 
that thing myself, for I am getting 
wonderfully acclimated out here — get- 
ting accustomed to the openness of this 
valley. It is open, too. No use to get 
behind a ladder to change your neck-tie, 
as we used to say, for there are too many 


32 


THE PEACE OF THE 


folks on the other side of the ladder. 
Yet all sides of the ladder interest me 
and keep on doing it. 

I must tell you about Eunice. She is 
not like any other farmer’s girl I ever 
saw. There ’s a cute little curve at the 
corners of her mouth that saves it from 
being too set. She ’s got a mind of her 
own ; says she’d vote if she lived in a big 
city in Kansas where women can do 
that. But she says it so matter-of-fact 
like and all, that I believe she would 
do it gracefully and not be undigni- 
fied if she wanted to. She does every- 
thing else that way, even if she does live 
in this Wild West. But she is wrapped 
up in her music, is just crazy about it, 
and wants to go on studying it some- 
where. All the Bronsons seem set 
enough in their notions. 

Kansas seems to put purpose into 
everybody. I confess, Mother, it makes 
me ashamed of myself sometimes. I 
don’t seem ever to have had a motive 
for living. New York just supplied my 
outside life. Inside of me, I ’ve not be- 
gun to live yet. 

Seth, the big son of the home, is 
bound to go West and make a mining 
expert of himself; seems to know the 
layers of earth clear down to where they 
spell places with dashes instead of let- 
ters. (Awful Leroy! he won’t say that 
any more. ) 

But why can’t he stay here, where 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


33 


he ’s needed ? I ’d stay with my father — 
if he ’d only let me. He ’s thrust me out 
into a cold, cold world. But it ’s a sun- 
shiny world this time, and Solomon in 
all his glory was never arrayed as this 
Solomon Valley is in the grandeur of 
this May morning. Not that this is any 
finer than New England or York State. 
There’s just such an eternal lot more 
of it to be seen all at once, it makes a 
fellow catch his breath — and dimly 
from somewhere comes up that old say- 
ing, “eye hath not seen,” etc. Not 
many such places for the eye to see, I ’m 
sure of that. * * * 

Those stars stand for the auto honks. 
Think of it! I just saved myself from 
total ruin the week after I came here. I 
had started in one evening to enlarge 
on the delights of motoring. It had 
been raining for an endless time and I 
was a dark dead blue. So I had to brag 
about myself or swear. The sunset had 
just rebuilt the world, made a new 
heaven and a new earth all out of old 
gray rags of clouds and a mud-sodden 
land, and a free sweep of warm wind 
was cleaning house for all out-of-doors. 
Well, I’d just begun to brag about 
some motoring I ’d done in my ancient 
Eastern life, when Father Bronson said : 

“Eunice, you and Seth might take 
Mr. Ellerton out to the hills with the 
machine, this evening, if it is not too 
damp.” 


34 


THE PEACE OF THE 


I supposed he meant the sewing ma- 
chine or mowing machine or the sulky 
plough. I’d not been as far as the barn 
then. But I had the grace to let up on 
motoring, — won’t say about swearing, 
but that was under my breath, — while 
I resigned myself to my accursed fate. 
And in three minutes, if Seth did n’t run 
out the spankingest big automobile — 
Well, I nearly fell off the front steps. 
And I’ve never said “ motor” since. 
* * * There goes my call again. 

Eunice is down by the front veranda, 
waiting to take me and this letter over 
to Talton. The R. F. Deliverer passed 
an hour ago. They really do have R. F. 
D.’s out here and mail daily . Good as 
East Machias about that. I can just 
see Eunice’s hair and the back of her 
neck behind the vines as she sits in the 
auto. That dark blue linen suit and 
square sailor collar and the pile of silky 
hair about it look good to me. So good- 
bye, dearest of Mummies. 

Lovingly, 


Leroy 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


35 


JUNE 

Letter from LEROY ELLERTON 
to HIS FATHER 

Talton, Kansas, June. 
Dear Father: 

Here it is mid- June almost before we 
can think. I am so much better I take 
no note of time. The hours always drag 
when one is suffering, and they seem to 
fly when we forget ourselves. That’s 
what I Ve been doing. I think I 
shouldn’t have thought about the time 
at all if your last letter hadn’t had so 
much of condolence about my being 
shut up out here. That ’s a good term 
for it, so we ’ll let it go at that. 

I ’m finding something new to do 
every day, and every day I am getting 
a new power of resistance. This must 
be the best of all seasons on these prai- 
ries. It quit raining back in May and 
there is a clear blue dome ten trillion 
miles across, sloping down to a level 
green earth that has no bound at all, but 
ravels out into a blur of pale lavender 
or deep purple where dome meets plain. 
Talk about Kansas cyclones! I Ve for- 
gotten the sound of thunder. 

“Who knows whither the clouds have 
fled? 

In the unseared heavens they leave 
no wake , 

And eyes forget the tears they have 
shed” — 


36 


THE PEACE OF THE 


And I have nearly forgotten my rheu- 
matism. 

The June days are warm here, but 
the nights are glorious, with always a 
ripple of soft air sweeping up from the 
south when the sun goes down. And 
such sunsets! Why, Poppy, they are 
gorgeous. Bronson’s place is located 
with special regard for them, I guess. 
Eunice and I watched the show last 
night. If I were an artist I ’d put this 
Solomon Valley on canvas a mile across. 
Up and down lie acre on acre of heavy 
green corn land, with golden wheat 
fields between, and sweeps of alfalfa 
with its shimmering purple bloom — 
the most beautiful herbage that ever 
grew. And through it all winds the 
Solomon River, with its fringe of green- 
ery. Beyond lie pastures with herds of 
cattle and hay fields brown and yellow 
with the mid-summer heat. 

Across this spread of land the level 
rays of sunset fling their splendor, while 
far up the sky a radiant glory of color 
no artist can ever paint — well, that’s 
the Solomon Valley. And stretching 
away to the very bound of the world, 
fold on fold, is a wavy richness of 
greens and browns and gold, with pur- 
ple shadows into which it all melts at 
last, and the pink tinting overhead 
slowly softening into silvery cloud mist. 
It is worth a journey to see. You may 
not care for all this landscape. You 
would if you saw it as I do. 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


37 


The Bronsons are n’t half bad, 
Father. Eunice is a fine girl, really. 
She can sing very well — for Kansas, 
and she rides still better. I could n’t get 
very lonely with such a wide-awake girl 
to keep me company. She is the joy of 
her father’s heart, although he is proud 
of Seth. Seth is going on West to Ore- 
gon, or somewhere else, as soon as he 
gets through school. The young fellow 
is silly about mining and can’t see that 
he ought to stay right here, that nothing 
could be better for him. But that ’s just 
the way with some fellows — never do 
know what is good for them. Why, the 
longer I stay here, the more I see what 
the ranch should mean to one born to it. 
Of course, it is n’t like the office and all 
that buying and selling and loaning and 
foreclosing business you have ready for 
me when I quit “ doing time ” out here. 
Harvesting a thousand or so bushels of 
wheat is n’t done behind glass partitions 
with onyx-panelled walls and roller-top 
desks and glittering fixtures and with a 
brick-and-mortar wall frowning before 
every window. That ’s to be my setting 
when I do business, while Seth here has 
a range such as the wild cattle of the 
plains once held, and the eternal swell 
and slide of all the winds of heaven. 
Why should he want to leave all this 
and go “ ex perting J ” down the black, 
blinding alleys of coal or copper de- 
posits under the crust of this beautiful 
earth? Even I know better than that. 


38 


THE PEACE OF THE 


This farm life appeals to me more and 
more. 

But that ’s enough about Seth. It is 
Eunice who interests me. She does sing 
beautifully, and her one foolish notion — 
just like Seth’s going West — is to go 
to New York and have her voice trained 
and then to go abroad maybe, for more 
training, and then to sing to crowded 
houses. A career! What does a 
woman — especially a Kansas woman 
and a farmer’s daughter at that — need 
with one anyhow? And Eunice is a 
Jayhawker, all right. I like to tease her 
about the West, she is so loyal to her 
State. I’ve ridiculed everything here 
just to see how she ’ll fight for Kansas. 
She is so handsome when she is a little 
bit excited. Then her brown eyes are 
full of fire and there is a pink flush on 
her cheeks. She is fair, I told you, with 
curly golden brown hair and the softest 
big brown eyes. 

Tuesday, Eunice said, “ If you will 
go with me to-morrow afternoon, I ’ll 
show you something you’d never find 
duplicated in your York State nor any 
other little Atlantic seaboard reserva- 
tion.” 

“ What is that?” I asked. 

“A forgotten bit of the sea,” Eunice 
answered. 

Late the next afternoon, we were off 
for a long spin to a little town miles 
away, where she had an errand of some 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


39 


sort. We had an early supper at the 
hotel and then we took in the town with 
its average number of uninteresting 
things and one or two odd features such 
as every little town possesses for its 
own. 

On our way home Eunice turned 
from the main road to show me that for- 
gotten bit of the sea she had promised. 
It was a beautiful evening, with 
such a sunset as I have described. And 
Eunice — but no matter. 

What we went out for to see was a 
wonderful welling up of salt water just 
like the clear green waves off Long 
Island. A huge mound of earth thirty 
feet high and a hundred across forms the 
cup which the water fills to the brim. 
The depth of this pool is only guessed 
at. So here it lies, by long secret under- 
ground ways reaching out to the sea or 
some salt spot a thousand miles away 
maybe. iEons and aeons ago the sea 
waves swept over Kansas, I am told by 
my geology. And then came its up- 
heavals and down-settlings, its stand- 
patting and boss-busting and machine- 
ruling, and all the whole grand mix-up. 
In which mix the sea went off and forgot 
this little bit of it. Forgot the combina- 
tion on the cut-off. Or maybe the 
plumbing of this old earth was as de- 
fective then as a New York flat is 
to-day. Anyhow, this precious, clear, 
green pool of salty water was forgot- 


40 


THE PEACE OF THE 


ten; and year on year, century on cen- 
tury, rising and falling like the tides of 
the ocean, it dimpled under the summer 
winds and smiled back at the skies above 
it. Like the pioneers of this Solomon 
Valley it defied the drouth to burn it 
out, or the winter blizzard to lock it up 
with ice. And the Indians came and 
called it Waconda — Spirit Water — 
and worshipped ever what they could 
not understand. 

Eunice and I sat down beside this 
spring and saw the full moon swing up 
the eastern sky and flood the land with 
its chastened radiance. All the Solo- 
mon Valley lay like a dream of peace 
under its spell. If I live a thousand 
years, I’ll never see another moonrise 
like that nor another such valley of rest 
and sweet dreamy quiet beauty, until 
the gates of Paradise swing out for me. 

And, Father, nothing in that scene 
fitted so well as that Kansas girl, Eunice 
Bronson, in her pretty white dress, with 
the wild rose bloom on her cheek. Some- 
how the fever of the world slips off out 
here sometimes and we get down to the 
real worth of things, without so much of 
sham and show. But this letter is al- 
ready miles too long, so good-night. 

Aff . yours, 


Roy 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


41 


AUGUST 

Letter from LEROY ELLERTON 
to HIS FATHER 

T Alton, Kansas, August . 
Dear Father : 

I have neglected you too long, but you 
know when I don't write, I ’m all right. 
I am getting better all the time, al- 
though I ’m not quite well enough to go 
home yet. You see, Father dear, this 
is a whole lot better country than you 
know anything about back in New 
York. Of course, you were out here 
once. I don’t wonder you lost your 
rheumatism. There is no place for it 
here. Why, right now New York must 
be like a bake oven. Oh, but I know 
how hot it is! Of course, it is hot here 
too, but it bakes out the rheumatism. 

Your little note this morning brought 
good news. To think of Aunt Pru 
getting her grip on things again, for- 
getting her aches and pains, and bun- 
dling mother off to Europe for the rest 
of the season as a reward for caring for 
her! I guess the old lady is better- 
hearted, after all, than we give her credit 
for being. Glorious for Mummy, is n’t 
it ? And she deserves it ten times over. 
But to come back to things earthy — 
that’s myself — you are wrong this 


42 


THE PEACE OF THE 


time. It didn’t make me a bit un- 
happy that it was n’t I who was sailing 
toward Europe. We can’t do all we 
want to do, of course. It ’s much ado 
with some of us to do what we ought. 
There’s Seth Bronson with his nose 
underground smelling out rock forma- 
tions, when the call of the soil ought to 
be music to him. I can picture every 
day what a fellow could do with Seth’s 
opportunity here. I think sometimes 
he half envies me what ’s coming to me 
soon — the city pavement and sky- 
scraper structures, and the jostling 
human herd roaring down those gloomy 
cracks that cities call streets. There 
are no scrapers out here. The sky is 
too everlasting far up. And only the 
great hand of God Almighty can fling 
the little cirri cloud flakes in groups 
that slope toward the zenith, or pile the 
black stupendous thunder folds against 
the western horizon and illumine them 
through and through with electric 
splendor, the token of His own glory. 
I never saw much of that from 
your office windows at home. The 
great lack with city-reared children, 
I ’ve figured out, is that we never see 
anything but the work of men’s hands. 
The grandest structures we may watch 
go up from a hole in the ground. All 
the shipping and ship-building is swung 
by machinery and some man is at the 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


43 


crane’s end guiding the pulleys. 
And every pretty park and bit of 
natural beauty has the water-works 
back of it and some sooty fellow in the 
engine room controlling it all. He can 
give and take away, can make a world 
of blue grass and blossoms, or — turn 
off the power — and leave only burr- 
grown sand. It takes the great forests 
or a stretch of prairie land, something 
only the Big Architect can build, to put 
a little reality into a fellow’s mind, and 
anchor him to something permanent. 
Maybe, Daddy, you have said some of 
this to me before, but it didn’t stick till 
I worked it out myself here. This is n’t 
a Robinson Crusoe island. I don’t go 
any on the hermit stunt. Neither 
is it “ the madding crowd’s ignoble 
strife” and strut. It is the peace half 
w T ay between the two, and Seth Bronson 
is an idiot, that ’s all. He can’t hear the 
message of every growing stalk of 
wheat, and the music of mowing ma- 
chines, and know the freedom from the 
crazy crowd forever at his heels. One’s 
work counts on the farm with Nature 
for a perpetual partner, putting up the 
big share of the capital, and with time 
now and then to stop and live, while the 
eternal wrangle of men and man-made 
things goes scrambling and screaming 
on in the congested centres of human 
population. Green as I am, I know this 


44 


THE PEACE OF THE 


much, and I say again that Seth is an 
idiot — fifty-seven varieties of an idiot, 
and I begrudge the ink it takes to dot 
the i when I write his title. He may go 
to * * * the stars. That is n’t pro- 
fanity. And I ’ll write about better 
subjects. 

I must tell you, Daddy, what a glori- 
ous j aunt we had this week. I ’ve teased 
Eunice about the little shrubs they call 
trees out here. I ’ve told her over and 
over about the real forests up in York 
State, while she has been saying all 
Summer, 

“Wait till August, and we will go to 
see some real trees, grand old oaks.” 

I asked her if they were of this 
Spring’s planting, and would be ripe in 
August. 

But she would only say — “Wait and 
see.” 

We are having long and clear days. 
The sky is all fine gold and the earth is 
a shading from yellow green to the deep- 
est brown. This thin air just suits me 
and the nights have that dry soft breath 
that cools but never chills. Let me see, 
was it Leroy Ellerton who used to 
dread the damp night air on account of 
the rheumatism ? 

But about the trees. Eunice and I 
had gone miles and miles up the Solo- 
mon Valley for a long picnic day. And, 
F ather, we did see such a grove of beau- 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


45 


tiful oaks as you ’d never think a flat old 
prairie could grow. They were tucked 
away in a little valley, where a muddy 
creek comes winding down to the Solo- 
mon River. You could hardly guess, 
unless you followed the stream, what 
was hidden in that deep valley. The 
dip and swell of the prairie showed us 
only a line of green leafiness, until sud- 
denly we were at the gateway of a grove 
sheltering a summer assembly camp- 
ground. 

Nestling under the shadows of the 
oaks were tents and tents, the out-door 
homes of the folk all round about this 
region, who come here every August- 
time. They were good to look at, too, 
these inhabitants of the Plains, for, to 
be square with you, Father, these folks 
are so much more worth while than I 
ever thought could be out here that I ’m 
going to be honest enough to say so. Of 
course, there are none of them quite like 
Eunice, but that’s another story. The 
earth is the Lord’s here, all right, but the 
fulness thereof is piling up in the banks 
in little towns like Talton. Friends 
of the Bronsons that I met at this 
Chautauqua affair do very much like 
real Easterners; they send their chil- 
dren to college, and they don’t seem to 
think much about it if some member of 
the family goes to Europe for a summer 
vacation. I ’ve not done that yet, you 


4G 


THE PEACE OF THE 


may recall. Say, Dad, if you know of 
any young city chap who wants to go 
where he can patronize the benighted 
community by his presence, don’t send 
him this way, please. When Eunice’s 
friends spoke in that commonplace fash- 
ion about going abroad, all I could say 
was that, “ Mother is travelling in 
Switzerland now,” or, “My father’s 
business takes him over often.” Re- 
flected glory beats no glory at all, and 
I just couldn’t meet all those friends 
of the Bronsons as a provincial, even a 
New York provincial. 

There were many interesting things 
that day for me, but what struck me 
most forcibly was the law-abiding spirit 
of the crowd in that assembly park. It 
was no beer-garden set. Why, I can’t 
bear the thought of some of our resorts, 
now that I suppose I ’ll be seeing them 
soon. * * * 

All this before I get to the trees. 
Ages ago, dense forests must have cov- 
ered this region, which some force later 
reduced to a grass land, and the prairie 
fires kept it thus. Only this winding 
creek had crept lovingly about these 
great oak trees — encircling them penin- 
sular fashion, shielding them from the 
flames. Through long sunny days and 
soft dark nights in years that rolled up 
centuries, the beautiful trees grew and 
spread their branches. Deep through 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


47 


the black earth they struck strong roots 
that held firm in the day of the cyclone’s 
wrath. They must be very old; they 
were growing here, I’m sure, when the 
Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock. 
And earlier, too, when Coronado and 
his Spanish knights wandered up to the 
Smoky Hill River country in search of 
Quivira and its fabled gold-paved cities. 
They are fine and venerable looking 
enough to have been lifting their young 
green boughs to the rains and bending 
against the hot winds when Columbus 
sighted land that October morning four 
hundred years ago. 

You may think I ’m getting poetical. 
It is in the air out here. I tell you, 
Father, there ’s nothing new and crude 
about this Solomon Valley. It is old 
and time-seasoned. 

That was a glorious day we spent un- 
der the oaks, with their grand green 
heads and their hundred-foot spread of 
shade. I Ve heard you talk about your 
boyhood up in Vermont enough to know 
how you would feel in such a place for 
one long, lazy August day. On the way 
back to Bronsons, we talked about the 
old oak trees and the different things 
they mean to different minds. One of the 
Yale men used to tell us, in his classes, 
how we made the world each for him- 
self, and how we must each read out 
and then act out his own destiny. It 


48 


THE PEACE OF THE 


all came back to me in that homeward 
ride, as many another long-forgotten 
lesson will come sometimes. 

We didn’t do any record-breaking 
speeding that evening. It was too good 
to live slowly. The Solomon Valley is 
in its late summer grandeur, and with 
the purple mist of evening hanging over 
it, the whole thing slipped from a wide 
landscape through a soft blur of helio- 
trope twilight into a black velvety night. 
Eunice is artistic enough to see all this. 
She is not like Seth. While he is peer- 
ing underground, her head is among the 
stars. She has her dream of a musical 
career cut and basted and fitted on. 
I Ve found that out, all right. Coming 
home we turned aside again to visit that 
spring, the one the Indians called Wa- 
conda. Whatever it may have meant 
to them, it had a message for me. The 
hour was that dim, shadowy time 

“ When all the jarring notes of life 
Seem blending in a psalm, 

And all the angles of the strife 
Slow rounding into calm” 

The sharp edges of the day are soft- 
ened and the world is made of curves 
and harmonious tones of color, pink and 
gray and amethyst. Looking out to- 
ward the Solomon River winding by 
black shadowed corn fields and gray- 
green meadows, I pictured the day w hen 
the red man ruled here and this pool of 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


49 


salt sea water was his shrine. His dead 
lay buried in the bottom lands by the 
slow-moving Solomon and he stood 
on this huge mound and sung his weird 
death-songs, and made offerings of beads 
and arrows and trophies to the waters, 
that the Spirit of the Waters would be 
kind to his departed ones. Did he lift 
his face in hope to the wide heavens 
above him and did he hear in the wan- 
dering winds, that ebb and swell 
across the plains, a voice that spoke of 
peace and the Great Chieftain’s promise 
of a future life? 

And then I thought farther back to 
the day when the sea had left this bit 
of itself, one lonely gem of emerald 
waters, upon the desert plains. And I 
thought how down the years, through a 
hundred hundred generations of men 
it had kept its place, with all the sea’s 
traditions, color, taste, and motion, ris- 
ing and falling regularly like the ocean 
tides, here in the heart of the great 
green plains, a thousand miles from any 
ocean waters. And I told myself a 
reason for it all. The mystery of 
Waconda and its world-old, world- wide 
lesson came to me like a revelation. I 
wondered what it meant to Eunice. We 
had read the same story in the old oak 
trees. When I spoke to her of the red 
man, and the origin of the spring, she 
said: 

“We have another notion of the In- 


50 


THE PEACE OF THE 


dians out here, but I, too, love this place 
which they must have loved. Waconda 
has a story for me, a mystery I have 
never yet fathomed. I wonder why it 
is here so far from the great sea, to 
which it belongs, and if it does not 
yearn, after the manner of inanimate 
things, for the great heaving ocean of 
which it could be a part. 

“I can understand it better, maybe, 
because I, too, am held here in this val- 
ley by ties hard to break, when all the 
time I am yearning to get out into the 
world, to study and work, and then, as 
a singer, to give delight to lovers of 
song.” 

I wanted to tell her the message the 
waters were bringing to me. But it 
wasn’t the time then. She is so set on 
this notion of a musical career. 

“We can never see with other peo- 
ple’s eyes in this world,” she said when 
we stood up for a last look at the valley, 
all tenderly gray, deepening into pur- 
ple. “ Waconda tells you one story and 
me another, and they may be very dif- 
ferent. If you should ask Seth, he 
would give you a mineral analysis, slick 
and comprehensive. To Father, it is a 
tragedy. He was too near to the time 
when this soil was red with the martyr 
blood of the first white settlers. I am 
glad we are a generation away from all 
that, and can look beyond it to the mys- 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


51 


tery of old Waconda of the long, long 
ago.” 

All the way home, Eunice sang sweet 
ballads, Indian love songs, and snatches 
from an Arapahoe melody: 

" W aconda, hear us, hear us! 

Waconda , Oh, behold us! 

Like the embers dying, O Waconda! 

Like the pale mist flying, O Wa- 
conda! 

W ood and prairie fade before us. 

Hills and streams our Fathers gave 
us. 

Home, and friends of home, O Wa- 
conda! 

And thy children roam, O Waconda! 

Like the weary winds, homeless cry- 
ing" 

Her voice is beautiful, but it seems to 
fit these open spaces more than it would 
the crowded, hemmed-in opera houses. 
That ’s her business, though, not mine. 

Good-night. There ’s a lot of doings 
planned ahead and I must get my 
beauty sleep. 

Affectionately, 


Roy 


52 


THE PEACE OF THE 


SEPTEMBER 

Letter frovi JOHN ELLERTON to 
DANIEL BRONSON 


New York City, September. 
My Dear Old Dan : 

Roy’s case is very hopeful. Why, 
he ’ s a credit to me; learns faster than I 
thought he could; writes like he had to 
instruct his green old father concern- 
ing the merits of your family. You 
must be a splendid teacher. The joke 
is on the cub, of course. He’s got as 
bad a case of Kansas fever as he had of 
New York rheumatism. Now, watch 
him squirm when I write to him to come 
home. 

You have carried him over the slough 

as you used to carry me when I was 

helpless with rheumatism, you blessed 

old son of a horse thief. Just as you 

carried me over the rough places at 

Y ale. tt 

Y ours, 

John Ellerton 


P. S. Mrs. Ellerton is in Europe 
now. Will spend the Winter on the 
Continent. 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


53 


Letter from JOHN ELLERTON to 
HIS SON LEROY 

New York, September. 

Dear Roy: 

Your six months is nearly up, — only 
two weeks more. On your own confes- 
sion your rheumatism left you in Au- 
gust, but I wanted you to be sure of 
it. You must be very tired of the Bron- 
son outfit by this time, so I write to tell 
you to come home at once. I sail for 
Liverpool the sixteenth. Come as soon 
as you get this, and we can go together. 
You might spend the Fall in Italy with 
your mother. That would just suit you. 
You needn’t answer. Come. 

Your loving father, 

John Ellerton 


54 


THE PEACE OF THE 


Letter from LEROY ELLERTON 
to HIS FATHER 

T alton, Kansas, September . 
Dear Daddy : 

What ’s the blooming matter with you, 
anyhow? And why did you ever think 
I’d want to spend a glorious Autumn 
in such a Dago land as Italy ? I have n’t 
asked for a reprieve, have I ? I’m will- 
ing to serve out my sentence here. You 
have gone galumphing off to Liverpool 
a dozen times without me, and mother 
has been in Maine in the Summers or 
in Florida in the Winters, leaving me 
an orphan, since I was sixteen. Kansas 
is just in its glory now. They say the 
Octobers are splendid here. I can be- 
lieve it, and I’m writing to ask for an 
extension of my sentence of six months, 
on account of bad behavior. 

You know I came West under pro- 
test. Now, why do you insist on cutting 
off two weeks of the time just when this 
old earth is at its finest? You can’t 
know in smoky, noisy, rushing New 
York, where the sun, moon, and stars, 
the changing seasons, and everything 
beautiful is lost in the crazy, reeling 
masses of people and mountains of brick 
walls, — you can’t know what this time 
of the year is like out here. 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


55 


“ All the rich and gorgeous glintings 
Merging into matchless tinting s. 

As the summer blossoms dwindle , 

And the autumn landscapes kindle , 
Setting vale and upland flaming 
In a glory past all naming ." 

That’s the Solomon Valley in Octo- 
ber, and a myriad changing hues make 
the landscape radiant with beauty. 
Everything is arranged for three or 
four weeks ahead. When you see 
mother, tell her I ’m the best I ’ve been 
in three years. I ’ve got the recupera- 
tive power of Aunt Pru. 

When I read your letter to Eunice 
she looked a little disappointed, I 
thought, but when I told her I should 
ask for a stay of execution she only 
laughed and recommended me to Italy. 
Mr. Bronson is waiting to take this let- 
ter to Talton. Hope you will have a 
fair voyage to Liverpool, but I can’t 
possibly join you now. 

Yours, 


Boy 


56 


THE PEACE OF THE 


Special Delivery Letter from JOHN 
ELLERTON to HIS SON 

New York, September . 

Dear Roy: 

I have put off sailing until the 
twenty-first, so you can get here in time 
to go with me. Now don’t think your 
father too blind not to see that you are 
merely frittering away your time with a 
green young Kansas girl. You are 
horn and bred to the city and you went 
out to that God-forsaken Solomon Val- 
ley only to get rid of your rheumatism. 
Now that it is gone, you must begin the 
life of a New York business man in real 
earnest. You can spend the Fall in 
Italy. That is your final polish. Then 
the grind begins for you. I need you 
in my office now and as soon as we get 
home from this trip abroad, you and I 
will make a firm that will cut rock in 
this great, busy, rushing city. Don’t 
write, but come. 

Your loving father, 


J. E. 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


57 


Special Delivery Letter from LEROY 
ELLERTON to HIS FATHER 

Talton, Kansas, September . 
Dear Father: 

Your “ special ” got here all right. I 
had my plans all set for another month, 
but I am obedient, if I ’m anything. It 
is too late for me to make the twenty- 
first. I’ll follow on the next steamer. I 
told Eunice last night what you said 
about my staying in New York. You 
need not be uneasy about that. She is as 
willing I should be in that big human 
maelstrom as you are eager to fasten 
me there. I found that out without her 
knowing it. I had thought — but never 
mind. I did n’t tell her what you wrote 
about her being a “ green Kansas girl.” 
I’ll write you at Liverpool and join you 
there later. 


Roy 


Yours, 


58 


THE PEACE OF THE 


Telegram 

Leroy Ellerton, 

T Alton., Kansas. 

I sail the twenty-fourth. Come at 
once. 

J. E. 


Telegram 

John Ellerton, 

New York City. 

Can’t make it. 


Roy 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


59 


NOVEMBER 

Letter from JOHN ELLERTON to 
DANIEL BRONSON 

Liverpool 

Daniel Bronson, 

T alton, Kansas, U. S. A. 

Dear Dan : 

I can’t tell you how I regret missing 
your letter which Leroy sent on to me 
here. 

Had I received it sooner, I could have 
cabled Roy to stay in New York until 
after your daughter Eunice should 
arrive. He could have made her feel at 
home at once. 

You see, I had to come on here with- 
out Roy, and when he reached New 
York from the West, a cablegram from 
me kept him from sailing at once. I 
had to leave some business for him to 
look after. I had already wired for him 
to come on before I received the letter 
of yours asking me to look after Miss 
Eunice. And he will be on the ocean 
when she reaches the city. But I have 
sent word to friends of ours who will 
meet her and do all any one could do for 
her, I am sure, except possibly Mrs. 
Ellerton, if she were at home. She and 
Roy will spend the next two months in 
Italy. 


60 


THE PEACE OF THE 


After all you did for Roy, this is a 
poor return to you and Miss Eunice, 
and you know how sincerely I regret it. 
I hope your daughter may like the city 
as well as Roy seemed to like Kansas 
last Summer. I haven’t seen him yet, 
but look for him on the next steamer. 

Yours faithfully, 

John Ellerton 

P. S. We will all be back in March 
or April and if we don’t show Eunice 
a good time, it will be the fault of New 
York, not of the Ellerton family. 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


61 


Letter from EUNICE BRONSON , 
New York , to DANIEL BRON- 
SON , Kansas. 

New York, November . 
My Dear Father: 

I reached N. Y. all right and found 
friends of the Ellertons waiting for me, 
who took me to the Conservatory of 
Music at once. I am nicely settled and 
I know I shall be as happy here as I 
can be anywhere away from you. The 
home on the Solomon seems pretty 
good to me to-night. I am homesick 
for Kansas for a minute. But only for 
a minute. The teachers here are 
full of praise for my work, and the 
promise of my future. Oh, if I could 
only fill a great opera house with my 
song until the very rafters rang with 
applause! I hope my ambition isn’t 
sinful, because I know I should be giv- 
ing the sweetest pleasure to music-hun- 
gry hearts. And why should not my 
ambition be fulfilled, if I put all my 
strength into my work? Since I was 
just a slip of a girl, I have been looking 
forward to this day when I should have 
the opportunity to try my powers. 
Even in the time when coming East to 
study seemed a wild impossibility for a 
Kansas girl, because we had n’t the 
money then, and New York was such a 
far-away thing, frowning coldly on a 


62 


THE PEACE OF THE 


farmer’s daughter from the West. But 
now, oh, Father, I’m walking on the 
cloud-tops, I ’m so happy to be here in 
this whirl of real life. If it wasn’t for 
you and Seth I ’d forget there ever was 
a Solomon Valley. 

It is so good of you, Father dear, to 
let me come, when the house must be 
lonely, with only a housekeeper in it. 
You realize, for you have lived here, how 
great it is for me to get away from the 
farm and the narrow life on the prairie, 
and to be in this wonderful city where 
they do things. Buy to-day, and sell to- 
morrow ; not plant in September — and 
maybe — after a long Winter and 
longer Spring, late in June garner in 
the harvest as we do our wheat. Pro- 
vided always that the drouth and the 
winds and the fly — and the May floods 
— have been merciful. 

I can see your eyes twinkle as you 
say: 

“ It is good wheat money that is send- 
ing my daughter to New York.” 

It isn’t wheat money that keeps this 
city on the everlasting jump, I am sure, 
and the queer thing in all this to me is 
that I seem to feel at home in it. I do 
believe that somewhere back in some 
past incarnation that Theosophists un- 
derstand (I don’t), I do believe that 
I was a real city girl, born and bred. 
Of course, I ’m a J ayhawker still, but 
it is just glorious here. I know I’m 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


63 


coming into my own, into freedom and 
opportunity, into the busy pulsing life 
of the great tides of humanity that 
surge these streets as the waters of the 
Atlantic surge up against its shores. 
And I am a part of it all, instead of 
being tied to the prairie like poor lonely 
little Waconda Springs, lost and for- 
gotten by the big ocean to which it be- 
longs. 

And Seth is gone too. The call of 
the West was as strong for him as the 
call of the East for me. He has sent 
me a perfectly grand letter from the 
Columbia River country. No use talk- 
ing, Father, one or the other of us will 
yet pull you away from the ranch. 
Which pole of the magnet will be the 
stronger, I wonder. 

Your loving 

Eunice 

P. S. — You would never guess whom 
I saw this morning. I was hurrying 
up to the Conservatory. The elevator 
was crowded, and, just as some one 
pushed me rudely — I’m not fast 
enough for New Y r ork yet — I found an 
arm put out to protect me, and in a 
moment the crowd had pressed me so 
close to Leroy Ellerton I could hardly 
see his face. Lie put his arm between 
me and the crowd to shield me. I was 
so glad to see him, for I am a bit lonely 


64 


THE PEACE OF THE 


here, when I look for a familiar face in 
the crowd. 

I thought he went abroad in October, 
but it seems he didn’t go. He said he 
had to stay here and look after his 
father’s business, said he had to give up 
all that beautiful trip to Italy he had 
told you and me about before he left 
Talton in September. How long ago 
it seems now since I was at home and 
Leroy was our guest. He is coming 
Sunday to take me to hear a great 
soloist at one of the big churches. One 
has such opportunities for those things 
here. Oh, I am sure I shall like it more 
and more. But when it comes to say- 
ing good-bye, dear Papa, I am not real 
sure about that past incarnation. But 
let it stand. I remember what you said 
when I left home: “If I would study 
hard and if I liked it here, I might stay 
as long as I pleased.” I’ll tell you 

later about that. 

-EjUNICE 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


65 


Letter from LEROY ELLERTON, 
New York , to JOHN ELLER - 
TON , Liverpool. 

New York, November. 
Dear Father: 

I am doing very well with the office 
work, although I’ll be mighty glad 
when your ship steams in again. I read 
all you wrote about what I was missing 
by not trotting after you to Europe in 
October, as I promised to do when I 
left Kansas. Great guns! Dad, it was 
your own fault I did not go at once. 
Your cablegram keeping me here for a 
month was waiting for me when I got 
in from the West. I confess it didn’t 
look bad to me, though, to read that I 
would be needed in the office here for a 
short time. I stayed willingly, because 
the old Atlantic had a sort of impass- 
able look every time I saw it. And 
now you try to make me feel what I ’m 
losing by not accepting this offer from 
you to tour Italy in December and 
January. I reckon Italy will be stick- 
ing on the map yet a while, and I can 
see it ’most any old December or J anu- 
ary, unless Vesuvius takes a notion to 
blow it up. In that case I ’m safer 
here anyhow. 


66 


THE PEACE OF THE 


By the way, old Bronson’s daughter, 
the “ green Kansas girl,” you called her, 
is in New York now studying voice cul- 
ture. Don’t turn up your aristocratic 
nose and ask how a Kaw squaw can do 
anything with voice culture. It makes 
me wrathy with my paternal relative 
every time I think of how you regard 
Eunice Bronson. I met her in an up- 
town elevator this morning. I mean 
she met me, for I saw her come from 
her train and meet our friends, and I 
saw where they lodged her. In fact, 
I ’ve been pretty much awake to every 
move she has made in New York. But 
to-day we came together in an elevator 
where a metropolitan hog was about to 
jostle the timid little Western girl off 
the edge of the earth. 

She thought I had gone abroad, but 
I told her I was looking after your busi- 
ness. That’s straight goods, Daddy; 
I ’m managing your estate and I was n’t 
telling any story. You’ll say I could 
drop it any half-minute and join you if 
I chose. But I don’t choose — not right 
now anyhow. 

Yours aff., 


Leroy 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


67 


DECEMBER 

Letter from EUNICE BRONSON , 
New York , to DANIEL BRON- 
SON, Kansas . 

New York, Christmas Eve. 
Dear Father : 

It is Christmas Eve, — such a cold 
white Yule-time as I can hardly remem- 
ber in Kansas. And I remember every- 
thing that ever happened in my life in 
the West, although I am thoroughly 
acclimated here, and feel as if I might 
have lived here forever. 

Yet always I ’m thinking of you and 
Seth. And especially to-night, my first 
holiday season away from home. I do 
so much wish you a happy Christmas, 
Father. There ’s a misgiving down in 
my heart as I write this. Can you have 
a real happy Christmas with both of us 
away ? Is your heart in the ranch house 
on the Solomon to-night? Or is it half 
in Seattle with my big brother, and half 
in New York with me? 

I don’t blame Seth for going West. 
That is a man’s right. But I am not 
sure of myself to-night. Ought I to be 
at home with my lonely father? It puts 
a sadness in this Christmas Eve for me. 
And yet, I remember how you delighted 
in all my plans for coming East, and 
every letter you write is so full of inter- 


68 


THE PEACE OF THE 


est in my work, and hope that I may 
win. I guess you love your little girl 
too much for either of us to be unhappy. 
And I am going to win, F ather. That ’s 
what I came here to do. I am studying 
hard. I never worked in that farm 
house in the days when the crops failed 
and we couldn’t afford to hire help as 
I am working now. But I am so happy 
in it all, it hardly seems like work. And 
as to liking New York — I love it. I 
have found so many pleasant people. 
New friends do not crowd out old ones 
at all. I find room for both. Leroy 
has been very kind to me and I Ve had 
such a round of good things I ’ve been 
in a perfect whirl. I can’t realize 
sometimes that I am the same Kansas 
girl who came to New York last Fall. 
Life here is so different, so hurried and 
feverish, I wonder where it will lead to, 
sometimes. Yet, I like it for this very 
hurry. 

And here is your letter saying you ’ll 
send me to Europe where I may study 
all next year if I like. Of course, I 
want to go to Europe. It is the dream 
of all my years. Everybody says my 
success is assured if only I can get a 
little foreign training. You would be 
so proud of me if I made a name for 
myself as a singer. And I shall try so 
hard to earn a great name. 

Leroy was here last night. He is a 
full-fledged business man now. We 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


69 


talked of the trip to Europe. Some- 
how he is more enthusiastic than any- 
body else about my going, but he never 
mentions the matter unless I bring it 
up, and he always changes the subject. 
But when he does talk he just makes 
Europe out a perfect paradise of oppor- 
tunity and urges me to go, even when 
I tell him how lonely you will be with- 
out me. 

My teachers here say that I must 
have had very fine instruction before 
coming to them, or I could not have 
made such progress in so short a time 
here, nor give such promise of results 
when I go abroad. Of course, I know 
I had good teachers. 

What do you suppose Leroy said to 
me to-night ? He came over to wish me 
the season’s greeting, and to bring me a 
big bunch of the most exquisite roses I 
ever saw. When I told him what the 
professor at the Conservatory had said 
of my training, he replied : 

“ It ’s because you sang so much in 
the open air. It was the prairie that 
put tone and volume into your voice.” 

I answered that it was my good col- 
lege training. 

“ It takes the West to put foundation 
under the East,” I said jokingly. 

“Yes, and it takes some Western 
folks to knock the foundation out from 
under some of us,” Leroy answered, 
and changed the subject. 


70 


THE PEACE OF THE 


It is getting late and the Christmas 
bells will be chiming soon their old, old 
music of “peace on earth, — good will 
to men.” Peace and good will, and all 
a daughter’s love, I am sending to you 
so far away in the Solomon Valley to- 
night, where the world is still and full 
of peace. The roar in New York seems 
never to stop. I am going to get away 
out of it for a little moment and dream 
myself back in the home with you. 

Father, may I tell you a secret? I 
have nobody but you to whom I can 
write or speak. I wish I did n’t care so 
much for what Leroy thinks. But I 
do. He does not know — will never 
know. He is wrapped up in this busy 
life of the city. And he is making 
money. He does n’t care whether I go 
to Berlin or Talton. It all began last 
Summer. I tried to think I should for- 
get it when he was gone. I put 
all my heart into my work and I’m 
keeping it there, for that is my life. So, 
giving it up now would be like giving 
up my life. And yet, sometimes, I ’ve 
dreamed of how a home might be with 
one I most loved there. 

But there is no use to think of what 
might be. What is, is a hard-hearted, 
cool-spirited, city-bred business man, 
engrossed heart and soul in dollars and 
cents and the great rushing crowd of a 
tremendous city, of which he is a 
part; and a maiden — destined to be a 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


71 


maiden always — who longs for the 
success that must come, a name of 
world-wide note, and the fame that is 
honestly won and belongs to those who 
do great things. 

Father dear, you must never tell that 
I told you this about Roy. It is a relief 
to tell you. Now it is written, I feel 
better. 

When I get all my plans for Europe 
arranged, I ’ll write them in full. Are 
you sure you won’t miss me too much? 

These beautiful roses fill the air with 
their perfume. They are dainty and 
pink like the pink tints of a twilight «ky 
that I ’ve seen above the prairies beyond 
Waconda. * * * 

Midnight, and the Christmas bells are 
chiming now. They seem to voice my 
love to you, dear, far-away Father, so 
good to me. I hope these sweet-toned 
bells bring dreams of peace to all I love 
— you and Seth — and even to Leroy, 
who is not thinking of me as they chime. 
He is dreaming of the business success 
he is to achieve. Peace and good will, 
and all good things be yours. 

Lovingly, 


Eunice 


72 


THE PEACE OF THE 


Letter from LEROY ELLERTON 
to his MOTHER 

New York, Christmas Eve . 
Dear, Dear Mother : 

My Christmas greeting to you this 
white, clear Christmas eve, not by let- 
ter nor cable, but by that wireless line 
of love vibrating from the heart of every 
boy who loves his mother as I do you. 
And equal greeting and love to my 
father with you — but it’s a different 
kind of affection. You know a fellow’s 
mother is his mother , that’s all. And 
if it was n’t Christmastide and I had the 
chance, I ’d like to punch the old gentle- 
man a round or two just to paste time 
out of him, as the boys say, for the low- 
down trick he played on me last Spring. 

To think of him and Daniel Bronson 
being boy playmates and old college 
chums at Yale, the lobsters! And of 
sending me, all verdant and innocent, 
out to Kansas to make a fool of myself. 
Well, it was a good thing the Atlantic 
was between us when I read your letter, 
explaining everything. As I say, it’s 
the Yule time of love, so I ’ll be mild. 
Only, if old Vesuvius should get to act- 
ing ugly, keep him on the landward side 
of you. He ought to be shaken up and 
likewise scorched and have sackcloth 
and ashes for his portion for a while. 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


73 


I Ve tried to think of all the silly, 
snobbish things I said at the Bronsons ’ 
last April and May — tried to forget 
them rather, for they come back to my 
mind often enough. I’m glad I had 
the sense to get over it all before many 
weeks and to see how the land lay. I 
inherited that sense from you, dearie 
(Dad hasn’t that much altogether, let 
alone giving me any), and I quit acting 
the idiot pretty early in the game. But 
it is the hour of peace on earth and good 
will to men. I wish the angels had 
made it women too, and not in irrever- 
ence, I wish it. 

Mother dear, I must tell you some 
things to-night, just as I used to tell 
you my troubles when I was a little boy 
and cuddled down by your knee on win- 
ter evenings. Let me feel your hand 
on my hair again as I write. 

I learned more than father had 
thought about in Kansas last Summer. 
He wanted me to find out what the 
West is like. That rheumatism busi- 
ness was only a side issue with him. It 
did get me away from thinking of my 
own ailments. I ’m doubly grateful for 
that. Heaven save us from a whining 
man! — or anybody else who dotes on 
“ symptoms ” and keeps his pains posted 
up for public inspection. Ellerton, 
Senior, wanted me to find out the 
worth of character in rural homes and 


74 


THE PEACE OF THE 


country lives. I found it out. Give 
me 99 per cent plus on Exhibit “ A.” 

Mother, I found more than that. I 
saw clearly the way of life I want to go. 
It is in my New England blood to love 
the soil. Am I not the son of Vermont 
and Maine, both of my parents born 
and reared away from the city? I 
wakened to my kingdom one day out 
on the Kansas prairies. It began by 
finding fault with Seth Bronson for not 
wanting to stay on the ranch with his 
father. What he was turning down 
seemed so full of promise to me. I 
love those grand, open fields on the 
sunny plains. The growing crops and 
fattening stock, the bounty of Nature, 
and the chance to think and live all 
called to me as nothing else in this world 
ever did — or ever will. 

Yes, I ’m fixed here, in the city, with 
one foot lariated to an office desk-leg, 
and I shall pay out my rope as far as 
the parks, now and then in the spring 
and summer time, while out in Kansas, 
the 

“Rolling prairie's billowy swell , 

Breezy upland , and timbered dell , 
Stately mansion , and hut forlorn — 

All are hidden by walls of corn ” 

I ’m trying heart and soul to be the 
junior partner here and to do my work 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


75 


well. And I ’ll keep on till it is second 
nature to me. 

There was another lesson I learned 
in the West, one that Father didn’t 
know was in the book, or he might not 
have selected the Solomon Valley as a 
sanitarium for me. Let me whisper, 
Mummy. I learned to love a dear, 
sweet-faced country girl, a wide-awake, 
capable, fun-loving, but scholarly, 
thinking girl. A girl with a life pur- 
pose of her own — ding it! — a plan 
for the future so big and definite that 
I cut no figure in it. I’ve told you 
about Eunice Bronson and her notion 
of being a musician. She is here now, 
taking voice culture under New York’s 
Best. Said Best are wild about her, 
urging her to keep to this purpose 
she brought with her. Study here and 
abroad ! Training under the best Mas- 
ters of Europe! I hear it all the time. 

For I stay pretty close to her here. 
You can guess why I turned down Italy 
this year. I ’m a fool still. Father ’ll 
have to play a bigger trick yet to get 
me altogether cured. I’m going to 
stay here too, as long as she is in New 
York. It is my last, last time, you see. 
Also, you can see how there is nothing 
for me in the Solomon Valley now, even 
if I could cut this business career. 

Have I told her all this? Not I. I 
tried to when we were at Waconda 


76 


THE PEACE OF THE 


Springs one August evening. But I 
read her story first and I knew it would 
be wasted time, so I kept still. I had 
hope then, of something changing 
things. I haven’t any more. She is 
planning to go to Europe in June. 
When her steamer sails, it will carry 
my one dream of happiness with it. So, 
I ’m going to keep her near me as long 
as I can; and when she gets ready to 
leave New York, I ’ll slip up to Mon- 
treal for a fortnight, so I can ’t play the 

blamed fool and go with Eunice. 

It would be like me. I ’m such a 

chump. And then when she is out in 
mid-ocean, I ’ll come back and resume 
my fetters here. 

But, mother darling, I ’ll play the 
man and make my bondage my help. 
I ’m not going to be a silly kind of idiot. 
I ’ll just do the best work possible and 
you and father will be proud of me as 
a business man some day, I hope. 


The Christmas bells are chiming, so 
it is midnight. This is the strangest 
Christmas I have ever known. The only 
peace on earth for me, dear mother, is 
the peace of overcoming. Surely there 
will be a day when I’ll forget all this 
and be as happy as I used to be. 
Life has these rifts, I know. But the 
chasms close again, don’t they? * * * 
There are the bells again, so sweet and 


SOLOMON VALLEY 77 

clear. I hope they are sounding softly 
in dreams for Eunice, who is dreaming 
of fame, not of me. To you and father, 
far away, a joyous Christmas. And to 
all the world, from Leroy Ellerton, 
good will and peace. 

Good-night and good-morning, pre- 
cious Mother. 

Lovingly, 

Roy 


78 


THE PEACE OF THE 


Letter from DANIEL BRONSON , 
Kansas , to EUNICE BRON- 
SON, New York 

Kansas, Christmas Eve . 
Dear Daughter Eunice : 

This is Christmas Eve, and although 
I am all alone, I am happy to send 
Christmas greeting to my children. I 
sent all the Christmas gifts by express 
a week ago, so you will be sure to have 
them in the morning. The house seems 
pretty big and hollow-sounding, for it 
is the first time in a quarter of a century 
that I have been alone when the holiday 
season came. 

It seems such a little while ago that 
you and Seth were toddling about in 
our little two-roomed house. That’s 
the tool-house now. Ellerton, your 
oldest brother, was born in a dugout 
one Christmas Eve, twenty-four years 
ago. Poor, little baby! He didn’t 
live the summer through. We had a 
better home — a palace it was to your 
mother and me — when you and Seth 
came to us. And yet, how poor we 
were! No Christmas stockings in those 
first years. We just kept Christmas 
in our hearts, which isn’t a bad place, 
Eunice, to celebrate it. For we were 
happy in each other’s love, my wife and 
I, and in our two sturdy little ones, who 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


79 


never knew what sickness meant. These 
things made up for the lack of beau- 
tiful gifts. Such a little while ago all 
that was. And now Christmas Eve is 
here again. The quarter section of 
land I preempted on the frontier is 
only one-eighth of the Bronson ranch 
to-day. The little dugout is the dog- 
house now, and the 12x14 homestead, 
a vine-covered tool shelter. Fourteen 
rooms, and upper and lower verandas, 
hot and cold water, a lighting and heat- 
ing system, etc., etc. These things have 
grown up from year to year. 

But to-night, although I am utterly 
alone, daughter dear, I won’t say I am 
lonely, for I know my children’s hearts 
are with me. And space does n’t count 
where love is strong. 

Seth writes that it is bitterly cold in 
Seattle, and I see by the daily papers 
that New York will have a white 
Christmas. Out here the air is almost 
balmy, and the skies are cloudless. 
There is a sort of October haze over 
the landscape, a sweet restfulness and 
peace that seem to pervade every- 
thing. 

I had business over Waconda way 
to-day. It was sunset when I reached 
the Springs coming home. I was in 
no hurry, for there were no little chil- 
dren waiting at home for me to-night. 


80 


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So, I turned aside and went over to 
Waconda while the sun sank from sight 
and the twilight of this beautiful Christ- 
mas Eve came on. My heart that had 
been sore and aching for my children 
was at peace as I sat on the rocks and 
thought of you. 

Seth is more than making good, he 
writes, and is infatuated with Seattle. 
It seems a certain black-eyed Manhat- 
tan girl, a classmate of his, has gone to 
Seattle in the interests of Domestic Sci- 
ence, and Seth, also in the interests of 
Domestic Science, is finding that city 
a good location. As I sat by the 
“ Spirit Springs,” as we used to call it, 
and watched the changing beauty of the 
twilight, I lived my youth over again 
until my own heart-ache slipped away. 
For love is a divine thing. 

" The love of home and native land , 
And that which springs J twixt son 
and sire , 

And that which welds the heart and 
hand 

Of man and maiden in its fire 
Are signs by which we understand 
The Love whose passion shook the 
Cross; 

And all those loves that deep and broad 
Make princely gain or priceless loss , 
Reveal the Love that lives in God 
As in a blood-illumined gloss” 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


81 


I thought of my daughter away to 
the eastward. I know, Eunice, that 
your heart is full of joy to-night, be- 
cause New York holds the best things 
in the world for you now, although you 
have put away the things that are mak- 
ing my boy’s Christmas good. You will 
come back to them some day, when 
fame and success are won. God grant 
you do not return too late. There 
comes a time to all of us when the sweet- 
est peace we can know is the peace of 
overcoming; of forgetting ourselves in 
our love for our fellow man. 

Believe me, dearie, there wasn’t a 
happier man in all Kansas to-night 
than your old farmer father, driving 
home in the quiet evening time. I 
lifted my face to the open skies and 
looked into the faces of the stars, the 
same old stars that watched this valley 
long before Waconda was here, and 
down through countless centuries while 
bald rock became sandy desert, and 
sandy desert grew to grassy plain, and 
grassy plain to verdant prairie, which 
human hands — even my hands — have 
helped to turn to fruitful fields, for a 
happy folk to thrive upon. 

And back of these changeless stars is 
the changeless love of the Heavenly 
Father. His right hand has guided me 
down the years. I love the land where 
I have walked with Him in storm and 


82 


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sunshine; so the Christmas peace and 
good will are blessing the Solomon Val- 
ley for me. 


It is growing late — almost midnight. 
May the love of God, the Father Al- 
mighty, and of Jesus Christ, His Son, 
be and abide with my children now and 
through the coming years. 

Your affectionate father, 


Daniel Bronson 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


83 


JUNE 

Letter from EUNICE BRONSON , 

Talton, Kansas , to LEROY EL - 
LERTON, New York City . 

Taeton, Kansas, June . 
My Dear Friend : 

Here I am again out on the ranch in 
the Solomon Valley. Of course you, 
with all of my New York friends, will 
be utterly disappointed in me, for my 
career was so full of promise. And 
father had given full consent for me to 
go on with my music under German 
masters. Oh, it was a rosy world open- 
ing before me, full of busy days, of 
struggling onward, winning my way 
step by step, and maybe too, full of 
rivalry and much defeat before fame 
came. For that was what I wanted — 
or thought I wanted — the sound of 
praise, the cheering audiences, the 
power of mastery over listening minds, 
the rush and whirl and glitter of a grand 
career. 

When you went up to Montreal on 
business just before I was ready to sail, 
I don’t know what led me to stop long 
enough to sit down and take stock of 
myself. But I did. I weighed Life 
as if it were calculated in ounces and 
pounds. And the result was this: I 
gave up every plan and hope and 


84 


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dream and came back again to Kansas, 
because my father wanted me and 
needed me. He did n’t tell me 
so. Brave old farmer that he is! He 
learned long ago how to endure and not 
complain. One gleans that lesson from 
the prairie sod in the years when the 
sunshine is a furnace and the clouds for- 
get their rain and the fierce winds blow 
all the seed away from the loose, dusty 
earth. In such years the farmers wait 
unchanged like Waconda, sure that 
other seasons will bring fruition of their 
hopes. And so my father waited, fill- 
ing every letter with cheery words. He 
sent me all the funds I needed and put 
no bar in the way of my doing just as 
I chose. 

Give me credit, or blame me alone, 
for turning my face from the East. 
And don’t be too severe, please, for I 
have valued your friendship. And now 
that you are a fixture in the city, a 
wheel in the great machinery of its 
business, and I am only a home-maker 
in a Kansas farm house, our lives will 
run so far apart, it will be by merest 
chance of Fate that they will ever cross 
lines again. Please do not think I am 
making an utter failure of living. Re- 
member me kindly if you remember at 
all. I told you once out by Waconda, 
the message of whose waters I could 
never understand, that we must read 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


85 


life, each for himself. I do not know 
why that piece of the green ocean is held 
here in the heart of the green prairie, 
but I do know that my work is here 
with my father and home and the best 
folks on earth — these lifetime neigh- 
bors and friends — who are a part of 
this Solomon River country. 

If you could only see how this home 
looks to my eyes that I thought could 
never grow weary of city grandeur, and 
if you could see the vast, beautiful out- 
door world unrolling its June splendor, 
you would be gentle in your thought of 
me. After all, the call of the West 
was in my ears day and night, much as 
I tried to drown it with the noise of the 
city and the roar of the Atlantic and 
the cries of Fame urging me on. The 
bustle of New York, the fever for a 
career, go down, after all, before the du- 
ties of home; and the handsome parks, 
the huge buildings, the rushing crowds, 
all give place to the wide Kansas prai- 
ries and the peace of the Solomon Val- 
ley. You will be disappointed in me, 
and disgusted with me. But while I 
miss many things I have been having 
for nearly a year, I am finding real life 
here, and rest, and — well, you know, I 
was born in Kansas, and after all, I ’m 
happiest here. 

Yours sincerely, 

Eunice Bronson 


86 


THE PEACE OF THE 


P. S. — Strangely enough, I can reach 
the high notes here when I sing out on 
the open prairie that I never could 
reach in the Conservatory. My voice 
is richest here. So, I must belong in 
the heart of Kansas. 


Eunice 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


87 


Letter from LEROY ELLERTON, 

Talton, Kansas , to JOHN EL- 
LERTON , Liverpool 

Talton, Kansas, June. 
My Dear Father: 

Don’t be surprised when you get this, 
not too surprised, anyhow. I send this 
to Liverpool so you may know what to 
expect when you get to New York. 
I ’m out hunting the rheumatism I lost 
here once. 

You see, Father, I came West first 
against my will, for I am a born New 
Yorker, that is to say I was a narrow 
provincial. It didn’t take many weeks 
for me to learn my lesson — that this is 
the real thing, not mere sham living, as 
I had supposed it would be. More 
than that, I found the dearest girl in 
the world out here. I lost my rheuma- 
tism and heart at the same time. And 
I learned to detest the city jungle as I 
learned to love this valley. The only 
thing I have ever really wanted to do 
is to put my whole energy into the life 
and work of a Kansas ranch. Maybe 
nobody ever heard of a city boy want- 
ing to become a farmer. Let me tell 
you that lazy Leroy Ellerton never 
really lived in any city; he just stayed 
there to be with his parents and 
give dignity to the family through his 
infancy and boyhood, and until he 
had finished college. One day, out in 


88 


THE PEACE OF THE 


the Solomon Valley, his real self awoke, 
and clamored for its rights. Day by 
day through a glorious Summer he saw 
more and more clearly the work his 
heart and hand were yearning for. 
There are so many misfits in this world, 
the wonder is there is any success at all. 
So many “ square men in round holes,” 
etc., and the trouble generally comes in 
trying to make a “rounder” of the 
square man instead of working a little 
on the hole he must fit into. 

Anyhow, the same Leroy boy knew 
eternally well what he could do best and 
was just planning to negotiate matters 
for getting into it, when there came the 
decree that he must give it up. And 
he gave it up, knowing, like Kipling’s 
fool, when he did it that — 

“Part of him lived , hut most of him 
died/' 

But I obeyed to a degree. I tried 
honestly to do your bidding. When I 
had left Kansas and reached the city, 
intending to take the steamer the next 
day for Liverpool, your cablegram kept 
me back for a brief time. Then Eunice 
came to New York, and somehow a 
pleasure trip through Italy looked like 
hard work at once, and I cut it out. But 
I buckled down to real hard labor, 
and I worked all the harder to fill my 
place with you when Eunice thought 
her pleasure lay in a singer’s career. I 
never tried to persuade her away from 


SOLOMON VALLEY 


89 


it. She gave it up herself, and came 
back to make her home in Kansas and 
to make her father happy. And the 
joy of duty done was hers. 

When Eunice was ready to sail for 
Europe, I knew I ’d make a fool of my- 
self if I stayed visibly in New York. So, 
I told her I was going to Montreal on 
business. I knew in a thousand years 
the Ellertons had never had any busi- 
ness in Montreal. But I told her that, 
intending to hide around a corner. 

That wasn’t going to work, I soon 
found out, so I put off — on a penance 
pilgrimage to East Machias, Maine. 

Father, I understand now all about 
the reward of humble sacrifice. I went 
up to cheer Aunt Prudence in her 
lonely hours. And it happened that 
Aunt Pru was the one to confer bene- 
fits. One evening, sitting in the twi- 
light by the wood fire, somehow — Lord 
knows — the dear old lady drew me on 
and on to talk to her as I never dreamed 
of talking to anybodv but my own 
Mummy. 

And then, with the firelight on her 
sweet old face and her snowy hair and 
with the wisdom of her eighty years of 
thoughtful living and good deeds to 
others, she seemed a sort of saint to me. 

“ Eunice is n’t doing her duty to her 
father, so much as to herself,” Aunt 
Pru declared. “ Far down in the girl’s 
heart there is a voice calling her away 


90 


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from all this thing she has planned, or 
she could not leave it. Take my word, 
Leroy, the girl isn’t happy here, and 
she knows where her duty lies.” 

“But what should I do, Aunt Pru- 
dence?” I asked her. 

“ The work you can do best and love 
the doing. It’s not always the easiest 
work, as labor goes, nor the work that 
brings the most monejr, but if it’s the 
thing you love to do, and can work the 
prettiest pattern into it, do that.” 

Then I saw my duty. Father, I 
hate Wall Street, and I’ve come out 
here to live a broad, busy, free life, to be 
a farmer in the Solomon Valley. To 
the life I leave behind me in the city, it 
is as health to fever; as peace after tur- 
moil. This is the best place on earth 
for me, for while our families are widely 
separated — you and mother in New 
York and Seth Bronson in Seattle — 
they centre here. 

I know all about your friendship for 
Daniel Bronson, you two old sinners! 
I ought to be obliged to you for letting 
me make a fool of myself, for it was 
good for me, maybe. Only nobody, 
least of all a New Yorker, cares to 
make a fool of himself. I came here 
two days ago. Last night we went in 
the auto over to that same lost bit of 
the sea, I wrote you about last year — I 
mean Waconda Springs. 

Sitting on the rocks looking out 


SOLOMON VALLEY 91 

toward the Solomon River, we saw the 
full moon make a new heaven and a 
new earth for this exquisite June night, 
I asked Eunice again, as I had asked 
her once before, if she knew the mystery 
of old Waconda, and the message of 
the waters to us. 

“ I cannot understand why this 
spring was left here all these years,” 
she said. “ It is a mystery I could never 
fathom.” 

And then I told her what the waters 
had told me; that this tiny bit of the 
sea, left here for so many centuries, had 
so loved this place, so rested in the peace 
and beauty of the valley, sun-kissed and 
mist-swathed, with the tenderness of the 
springtime, the glory of mid-summer, 
the splendor of autumn, that it chose 
to stay here; chose to forsake the rest- 
less, stormy, seething ocean that ham- 
mers forever on its shores and here to 
watch the unfolding of a kingdom, the 
life of a people coming at last into their 
own. 

The clear green water dimpled in 
silver sparkles under the glorious moon, 
and the peace of the Solomon Valley 
mingled with the peace of our own 
hearts. For we, too, had found our 
own at last, — our kingdom here in 
Kansas. 

Your loving 

Roy 


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